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Materials

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This lesson is ideal for any number of students, ideally for kindergarten - 2nd grade, a beginning ELL student, or for a one-on-one session with a therapist. Students should be familiar with the emotions chosen for review in this lesson.

Lesson Overview

Students will use the Link4Fun Cards to practice identifying, categorizing, and communicating with vocabulary words. Students will interact with the teacher or therapist using vocabulary cards with interactive technology. Each part of the lesson plan can be extended or shortened depending on the needs of the child.

Lesson Overview

Students will use the Link4Fun book and app to develop their literacy, social skills, and vocabulary. Students will interact with the teacher or therapist using a print-based picture book with a digital device for an interactive reading experience. Each part of the lesson plan can be extended or shortened depending on the needs of the child.

Lesson Overview

Students will use the U-Play Mat to practice identifying, categorizing, and communicating with vocabulary words. Each part of the lesson plan can be extended or shortened depending on the needs of the child.

Lesson Overview

Students will make an animal that they would most like to be or admire in some way. Students will then choose a song that their animal likes and move their animal to the rhythm of the music. Students will then listen to various types of music and choose other animals to move, following the rhythm of the song. Students will then see how different animals might interact with each other. This is an early childhood activity that can be adapted to special needs students by breaking down the activities and reinforcing the steps separately. Students can build skills that they can use to interact with their peers.

Lesson Overview:

By touching or pointing to the appropriate card, students show that they recognize the word and can identify the corresponding picture. This activity can be prefaced by the Picture ID lesson to familiarize the student with the pictures he/she is finding.

Lesson Overview:

Students will learn job identification and better understanding of tools and identifying features of particular workers as they respond to the prompt, "Tell me about..." to describe a worker and/or a worker’s job as depicted on Language Builder Occupation Cards.

Lesson Overview:

This lesson plan focuses on the uses of adjectives and other descriptive terms to discuss the attributes of objects shown in the pictures with a teacher, and develops picture identification and vocabulary skills.

Lesson Overview:

This lesson plan reinforces the idea that sometimes, you just need a little help! Students use their problem-solving skills to identify when they need help, then advocate appropriately to get the assistance they need to complete a puzzle that is missing a piece.

This lesson plan gives the classic card game Go Fish an emotional makeover! Students work on their expressive and receptive vocabulary and understanding of the five basic emotions, all while practicing social skills, taking turns, and following the rules of the game.

In a hurry? Download a one page description of this lesson plan by clicking on the picture below:

So you’ve just downloaded the new Language Builder app. That means you can throw out all your paper flash cards right? NO!! As you may have already realized through our previous blogs, we are big proponents for blending hands-on and digital learning. There are so many ways that you can combine both digital and tangible resources to support deeper engagement.

Our intent with the app is to complement, rather than replace, the physical products. We will begin a new blog series demonstrating ways to use your physical language builder cards and other Stages products in conjunction with the app.

Why Matching Activities for Children with Autism?

What does matching teach a child? How can this be a step toward developing language? Matching skills are essential for language development for children with autism.

In ABA therapy matching skills typically follow a hierarchy from the easiest and most accessible matching activities using identical physical objects to the more complex and abstract notion of matching representations of objects, such as those found in specially designed picture cards. As the child advances in matching activities they are able to connect physical objects with cards that represent the objects: A big leap forward in the development of language skill learning! Research demonstrates that using a progression of matching activities using ABA therapy techniques provides children with scaffolding needed to develop language skills.

Choose a 3D object to start with. Bowls and Cups, as offered in the Everyday Object Matching Kit are often a good first choice because they “nest,” which is a natural motivator for students to stack them together. Alternatively start with an object that is attractive or motivating to your particular student. If your student tends to engage in wheel-spinning stimulatory behavior, you may not want to start with wheeled vehicles.

Sit in a chair or on the floor with the student

Make sure you have the child’s attention

Place 1 object in front of the student

Hand your student the identical object and ask the student to match the objects

Typical commands include “Match the Apples” “Put with Same” “Put Apple with Apple”

Prompt if necessary

Wait for the student to match the object correctly

Reinforce the student

Once the student has mastered matching one object, you can then move through the list of identical objects to match. As the student becomes more competent matching identical objects in a field of one, you can then add more objects to the field so the student will have to scan the objects before matching.

Choose a 3D object to start with. The Language Builder® 3D - 2D Matching Kits, such as the Food or Animal kits, are perfect for this matching activity. Start with an object that is attractive or motivating to your particular student. It is a good idea to choose an object with which your student has had significant success matching in the 3D - 3D matching activity.

Sit in a chair or on the floor with the student

Make sure you have the child’s attention

Place 1 picture card in front of the student

Hand your student the corresponding 3D object and ask the student to match the objects

Typical commands include “Match the Apples” “Put with Same” “Put Apple with Apple”

Prompt if necessary

Wait for the student to match the object correctly

Reinforce the student

Once the student has mastered matching one object to the corresponding photo card, you can then move through the list of identical objects to match. As the student becomes more competent matching object to card in a field of one, you can then add more objects to the field so the student will have to scan the objects before matching. There are additional lessons designed for 3D - 2D matching at the end of this article.

Choose a card from the Language Builder® Picture Nouns set to start. Begin with a card that has an image that is attractive or motivating to your particular student. It is a good idea to choose an object with which your student has had significant success matching in the 3D - 3D, and 2D - 3D matching activities.

Sit in a chair or on the floor with the student

Make sure you have the child’s attention

Place 1 picture card in front of the student

Hand your student the corresponding picture card and ask the student to match the pictures

Typical commands include “Match the Apples” “Put with Same” “Put Apple with Apple”

Prompt if necessary

Wait for the student to match the picture cards correctly

Reinforce the student

Once the student has mastered matching one photo card to the corresponding photo card, you can then ask the student to match other identical pictures. As the student becomes more competent matching card to card in a field of one, you can then add more cards to the field so the student will have to scan the cards before matching.

Choose a card from the Language Builder® Picture Nouns set to start. Begin with a card that has an image that is attractive or motivating to your particular student. It is a good idea to choose an object with which your student has had significant success with in previous matching activities.

Sit in a chair or on the floor with the student

Make sure you have the child’s attention

Place 1 picture card in front of the student

Hand your student the corresponding similar but not identical picture card and ask the student to match the pictures

Typical commands include “Match the Cats” “Put with Same” “Put Cat with Cat”

Prompt if necessary

Wait for the student to match the picture cards correctly

Reinforce the student

Once the student has mastered matching one photo card to the corresponding similar photo card, you can then ask the student to match other similar pictures. As the student becomes more competent matching card to card in a field of one, you can then add more cards to the field so the student will have to scan the cards before matching

Research on Matching: 3D - 2D is Essential

Basic matching is one of the first lessons taught in an Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) program for children with autism. Teaching early language skills to children with autism often begins with having children match identical objects. Before a child can learn that the picture of an object actually represents a real item (picture-object correspondence), the child may need to start learning by matching actual physical objects. It is often necessary to start by matching 3D objects such as cups or toy cars and later transition to matching identical images on cards (Blumberg & Hurley, 2007).

Teaching daily living skills to children with autism often depends on using activity schedules and sequencing charts. These tools are effective only at the point at which children have mastered the prerequisite skills of matching a 2D image to a 3D object (Haas, 2011). Until a child has the capacity to understand that a 2D image such as a picture of a toothbrush represents an actual object, being able to prompt a child to engage in brushing their teeth cannot be accomplished using an activity schedule or card. Some children will eventually be able to move from seeing an actual toothbrush, to recognizing a card that has a photographic image of a toothbrush, to recognizing the word “toothbrush.” Other children with more severe language delays will only be able to respond to 3D prompts (Baynham, 2007).

The Research Connection Between Matching Activities and Language Development

In a study using different types of photographs, symbols, and objects to teach language skills to 40 non-verbal subjects with autism the real objects proved to be much more readily recognized than any of the other representations of objects (Mirenda & Locke, 1989).

Typically developing infants and children under the age of three also learn from viewing 3D objects and often cannot process a 2D picture of an object until a later age. Researchers testing 5-month-old infants found that these infants could not understand 2-D images, but when presented with the same content in 3D representations infants were able to understand the objects. The researchers found that by examining 3D objects children naturally learn about objects in their world and that being able to examine a 3D object provides additional sensory information rather than just viewing a 2D image on a card (Mash & Boornstein, 2012).

The following are resources that can help support basic matching activities to promote language development:

Baynham, Tanya Yvonne. (2007). Training a non-match response: Toward a technology for determining controlling stimulus dimensions for two children with autism. University of North Texas, Dissertation. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing.

Haas, Stephanie Iwanciow. (2011). “Teaching daily living skills to young adults with autism: the creation of a curriculum guide for special education teachers.” California State University: M.A. Thesis. Available: http://digitalcommons.csumb.edu/caps_thes/426

Stages Learning Materials is starting a new blog series around blending digital and hands-on learning. There are a lot of mixed messages surrounding the use of technology in early childhood. In a recent Edutopia article, Beth Holland advises teachers and parents to look beyond all the negative screen time publicity and to ask themselves three questions when choosing to use digital materials:

Is it appropriate?

Is it meaningful?

Is it empowering?

Lesson Overview

Students will use Everyday Object Lang-O-Learn Cards in conjunction with Kid in a Story app to build vocabulary on common objects that can be found around the home and at school. The app enables sharing between parents, therapists, and teachers, which leads to consistency across all environments.